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in madness and murder. Rather let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing. For, if once you are alive, you shall find they shall become plastic and new. The remedy to their deformity is, first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul. * Two inestimable advantages Christianity has given us; first, the Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole world; whose light dawns welcome alike into the closet of the philosopher, into the garret of toil, and into prison cells, and everywhere suggests, even to the vile, the dignity of spiritual being. Let it stand forevermore, a temple, which new love, new faith, new sight shall restore to more than its first splendor to mankind. And secondly, the institution of preaching,- the speech of man to men,- essentially the most flexible of all organs, of all forms. What hinders that now, everywhere, in pulpits, in lecture-rooms, in houses, in fields, wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, you speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation?

I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, which ravished the souls of those Eastern men, and chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West also. The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures contain immortal sentences, that have been bread of life to millions. But they have no epical integrity; are fragmentary; are not shown in their order to the intellect. I look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining laws, that he shall see them come full circle; shall see their rounding complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy.

(Delivered before the Senior Class, Divinity College, Cambridge, Mass., July, 1838.)

Capital Punishment.

By EDWARD LIVINGSTON, of New York.
(Born 1764, died 1836.)

XISTENCE was the first gift of Omnipotence to man,— existence accompanied not only by the instinct to preserve it, and to perpetuate the species, but with a social (not merely a gregarious) disposition, which led so early to the formation of societies, that unless we carry our imagination back to the first created being, it is scarcely possible to imagine, and certainly impossible to trace, any other state than that of the social it is found wherever men are found, and must have existed as soon as the number of the species were sufficiently multiplied to produce it. Man, then, being created for society, the Creator of man must have intended that it should be preserved; and as he acts by general laws, not by special interference (except in the cases which religion directs to believe), all primitive society, as well as the individuals of which it is composed, must have been endowed with certain natural rights and correspondent duties, anterior in time, and paramount in authority, to any that may be formed by mutual consent. The first of these rights, perhaps the only one that will not admit of dispute, is, as well on the part of the individual as of the society, the right to continue the existence given by God to man, and by the nature of man, to the social state in which he was formed to live; and the correspondent mutual duty of the individual and of the society is to defend this right; but when the right is given, the means to enforce it must, in natural as well as positive law, be admitted to be also given. If, then, both individuals and the society have the right to preserve their several existence, and are, moreover, under the reciprocal duty to defend it when attacked, it follows, that if one or the other is threatened with destruction, which cannot be averted but by taking the life of the assailant, the right, nay more, the duty to take it exists: the irresistible impulse of nature indicates the right she has conferred, and her first great law shows that life may be taken in self-defense. It is true the aggressor has the same right to exist; but if this right were sacred while he was attempting to destroy that of another there would be coexisting two equal

and conflicting rights, which is a contradiction in terms. The right, therefore, I speak of, is proved; but both in the individual and in society it is strictly defensive it can only be exerted during that period when the danger lasts, by which I mean the question is, Which of the two shall exist, the aggressor or the party attacked, whether this be an individual or the society? Before this crisis has arrived, or after it has passed, it is no longer self-defense and then their right to enjoy existence would be coexistent and equal, but not conflicting, and for one to deprive the other of it would be of course unjust.

Therefore, the positions with which I set out seem to be proved. That the right to inflict death exists, but that it must be in defense, either of individual or social existence; and that it is limited to the case where no other alternative remains to prevent the threatened destruction.

In order to judge whether there is any necessity for calling this abstract right into action, we must recollect the duty imposed upon society of protecting its members, derived, if we have argued correctly, from the social nature of man, independent of any implied contract. While we can imagine society to be in so rude and imperfect a state as to render the performance of this duty impossible without taking the life of the aggressor, we must concede the right. But is there any such state of society? Certainly none in the civilized world, and our laws are made for civilized man. Imprisonment is an obvious and effectual alternative; therefore, in civilized society, in the usual course of events, we can never suppose it necessary, and of course never lawful; and even among the most savage hordes, where the means of detention might be supposed wanting banishment, for the most part, would take away the necessity of inflicting death. An active imagination, indeed, might create cases and situations in which the necessity might possibly exist; but if there are any such, and they are sufficiently probable to justify an exception in the law, they should be stated as such, and they would then confirm the rule. But, by a perversity of reasoning in those who advocate this species of punishment, they put the exception in the place of the rule, and, what is worse, an exception of which the possibility is doubtful.

It may be observed, that I have taken the preservation of life as the only case in which even necessity could give the right to take life, and that for the simple reason, that this is the only case in which the two natural rights of equal importance can be balanced; and in which the scale must preponderate in favor of him who endeavors to destroy. The only true foundation for the right of inflicting death, is the preservation of existence. This gift of our Creator seems, by the universal desire to preserve it which he has infused into every part of his animal creation, to be intended as the only one which he

did not intend to place at our disposal. But, it may be said, what becomes of our other rights? Are personal liberty, personal inviolability, and private property to be held at the will of any strong invader? How are these to be defended, if you restrain the right to take life to the single case of defense against an attack upon existence? To this it is answered: Society being a natural state, those who compose it have collectively natural rights. The first is that of preserving its existence; but this can only be done by preserving that of the individuals which compose it. It has, then, duties as well as rights; but these are wisely ordered to be inseparable. Society cannot exert its right of self-preservation without, by the same act, performing its duty in the preservation of its members. Whenever any of those things which are the objects of the association, life, liberty, or property, are assailed, the force of the whole social body must be exerted for its preservation: and this collective force, in the case of an individual attack, must, in ordinary cases, be sufficient to repel it without the sacrifice of life; but in extraordinary cases, when the force of the assailants is so great as to induce them to persevere in a manner that reduces the struggle to one for existence, then the law of self-defense applies.

But there may be a period in which individual rights may be injured before the associated power can interfere. In these cases, as the nature of society does not deprive the individual of his rights, but only comes in to aid their preservation, he may defend his person or property against illegal violence by a force sufficient to repel that with which he is assailed. This results clearly from the right to property, to whatever source we may refer it; and from that of personal inviolability, which is (under certain restrictions imposed by nature itself) indubitably a natural right. As the injury threatened may not admit of compensation, the individual may use force to prevent the aggression; and if that used by the assailant endangers his life, the question then again becomes one of self-defense, and the same reasoning applies which was used to show the right of taking life in that case. But where the individual attacked can, either by his own physical force, or by the aid of the society to which he belongs, defend himself or his property, when the attack is not of such a nature as to jeopardize his own existence in the defense of them,—if he take the life of the aggressor, under these circumstances, he takes it without necessity, and consequently without right. This is the extent to which the natural law of self-defense allows an individual to go, in putting another to death. May any association of individuals inflict it for any other cause, and under any other circumstance? Society has the right only to defend that which the individuals who compose it have a right to defend, or to defend itself

that is to say, its own existence, and to destroy any individual, or any